Reps blame FERMA, contractor for state of N300m road project

Members of the House of Representatives’Committee on have expressed shock over a project in Niger State that has not been started, despite that the contractor has been mobilised to move to site.

The lawmakers were on an oversight function in the state to ascertain the level of implementation of this year’s budget.

Four of five projects allocated to the state have been awarded and mobilisation paid by FERMA.

However, on-the-spot assessment of the projects contradicted the reports given to the committee, which showed that work had started on one of the roads as the contractor had been mobilised.

But the contractor handling the project, Enerco Nigeria Limited, claimed it has not been mobilised.

A member of the committee, Abdulrazak Zaki, said: “We are angry because they misled us. We were told that work has commenced on site only to get here and discover that it was at zero level. We would not have embarked on this tour if documents presented to us by the agency showed otherwise.

While he questioned the essence of the oversight, the lawmaker alleged connivance between the agency and the contractor on the state of the project.

“What is the essence of our coming here? We are not happy and our job is to let Nigerians know what is happening.

We are not here to cover anything up. To me, the so- called fight against corruption by the Executive is just a farce because they give cover to corruption,” he added.

Another member, Dr Abiola, said the discovery has supported the need for physical inspection of infrastructural projects across the country by the lawmakers.

“It is rather unfortunate to have travelled all the way from Abuja, over such a long distance only to see nothing and all we could hear was that the contract was awarded two weeks ago and nothing to show for it.

“When the legislators are showing concern over the level of budget implementation for 2012, that it is nothing to write home about, it is for occurrences like this.

“It shows insincerity on the part of the agency, because I want to believe that there is no reason for this lack of activity if they have been given money. I just don’t understand the reason we should be taken to where nothing is happening. That is just the most ridiculous aspect of it,” she said.

Chairman of the Committee, Gregory Chukwuegbo, who also expressed disappointment, however, corrected the impression of being misled to a zero performance site, saying: “ I believe why we were brought here was that we requested for the 2012 budget, but the on-going Mokwa project was for 2010/2011 budget year.”

According to the Chief Maintenance Engineer, who disclosed that about N300million would be spent to recover the 20km affected portion of the 165km road, the project was to make the road motorable and prevent it from collapse.

The committee promised to return to the site before the end of the year to ascertain progress of work.